Timshel
by thaipothetical
Summary: She won't change, and neither will he. She's headstrong and he's stubborn, and neither of them would change that. Fighting two sides of losing battle, they found hope in one another - but in the aftermath of one battle and before the dawn of the next, they both know that this can't last. Hiccstrid AU, now a trilogy.
1. Chapter 1

She finds him on an island a hundred miles from the still-smouldering remains of the Alpha's nest.

He hasn't even bothered to hide himself, or the trail of smoke from the pathetic fire he's huddled over, but she can't tell if he's careless or he wants her to find him. She spots the glow from miles away, and the smoke trail even further, but it isn't until she lands, axe first, that she realises it's the same island they landed on the day before.

Has it only been two days? No, it's been less - it was hardly midday when she'd sighted the streak of black in the clouds and chased it like a will'o'wisp, some secret fantasy creature that only she could see. She had never expect to catch it, or to see the ancient breed of dragon she had long presumed dead or the rider she had long known to be gone. She hadn't expected the rush in her veins when she recognised him, still the same awkward and goofy boy she knew behind a man's face - a handsome face, she'd assessed critically, trying to ignore her urge to grab his shirtfront and kiss him like she had all those years ago in front of an entire village.

She had chased him through the sky and his mouth had fallen open in disbelief when he recognised her - still the same yet so different. They hadn't spoken, apart from a disbelieving shout of each other's names through the clouds and joyous laughter as they flew together for the first time in four years, still shocked that something like fate had brought them back together again.

Toothless is curled around his rider protectively, and he narrows his eyes at her as she approaches, sniffing the air. He can smell the blood and ash that stains her skin, the rusted iron and sweat on her brow, the fine grains of sand that seemed sealed in her very soul. He had treated her with happy exuberance only yesterday, happy to see an old friend and even happier to see his rider so elated. But now he glares at her as she swings from Stormfly's back and commands her dragon with a quick series of hand signals to stay on watch, then downright snarls as she approaches his rider.

The riding leathers he usually wears lie in a heap by the fire and his shirt is gone - she tries to calm her heartbeat and focus on the bandage he's wrapping around his bicep. After only a few seconds, she can't bare to watch and drops her axe to approach him.

"Let me," she says, grabbing the end of the cloth and unwinding his previous efforts. She can feel the vibration of Toothless' growl as she sits down beside him, her hip resting against the dragon's flank. He puts a reassuring hand on the dragon's skin, and Toothless calms, but shifts to avoid contact with the hated female.

"Astrid—"

"No. I did it, so I might as well do this."

The bandage comes loose, its end bloody, and she suppresses a gasp at the sight of the deep gash along his bicep. It's raw and open - not long, but wide - and cuts down into the muscle. He needs stitches, but she can't give them.

"You did a good job."

She scowls to hide the flush in her face at his accusation. "You did a terrible one. Give me your shirt."

He wordlessly obliges and she rips off the sleeve where the fabric is already torn, wadding it up and pressing it against the wound. He flinches, and she freezes, before he exhales sharply and relaxes in her grip.

"It hurts," he says needlessly, and she resists the urge to press the fabric harder, to grind it in until he's sobbing in pain and begging her to stop, promising her anything in return for an end to the pain. Maybe that will stop the ringing in her ears and the tightness in her chest.

"I know. Hold still." She winds the bandage around and around, holding the folded shirt fabric in place to stem the blood. He holds his arm close to his chest on impulse, and each time she winds the cloth around him her fingertips brush his bare ribs.

"Are you going to apologise?"

His question catches her off guard, and she realises how close her head is leaning into his shoulder. She pulls back and straightens her posture, tugging the bandage a little tighter than necessary and listening to his hiss of pain with an odd satisfaction. The sand around her legs shifts with her movements, bracketing her, and she can't help thinking that nothing in her life is ever secure and solid.

"I'm fixing you up. If you came back to camp I could get Ruff to stitch it up properly, but—"

"No."

His free hand closes over hers, holding it against the rough cloth.

"Don't do this. Don't even try."

She snorts, shaking off his hand and finishing the bandaging. She tucks the edge into the wraps and, on impulse, leans in to press her lips to the dressing.

"I'm sorry."

She looks up at him, and it still surprises her how tall he's grown, that she has to look up at him. The flickering light of the fire casts a warm glow on the sharp line of his chin, and her heart drops as he shakes his head.

"No you're not."

She sighs and nods. "No, I'm not."

She's still nodding, with a sad smile on her lips, when he leans forward to kiss her. It's an innocent kiss, a soft and sweet press of lips - nothing like the rough and ready tangle of tongues from last night - but she still feels the faint tingling of electricity beneath her skin at his touch. His hand settles beneath her chin, holding it up to him long after she knows the kiss should have ended, and she wonders if he came back to this island in the hope she might forget what had transpired during daylight and only think of how he had kissed her on the sand in the dark.

When she breaks away, it's to look over at Stormfly. The Deadly Nadder still stands to attention, watching the skies with keen eyes and sniffing the wind. She glances over to them, as if sensing a change in the air, and goes back to scanning the horizon at a flick of Astrid's fingers.

"They're incredible. You aren't wrong." She turns back to him, and can see the resignation in his eyes. "But they aren't safe. You know how easily they can be controlled - by queens, by Alphas, by men."

"So you control and conquer for their safety?"

His words are biting and sarcastic, and she exhales sharply - somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. "I do. I can't speak for your father, or the rest of the tribe, but—"

"How is taking cities captive for the better, Astrid? How is enslaving dragons to fight in your army_for their own good_?" He heaves himself to his feet, distancing himself from her warm body to look down on her in rage. "How is your _empire_ any different?"

She stands abruptly, and hates that even standing he can still look down on her.

"If we didn't, someone else would."

He laughs, bitterly, and shakes his head.

"And I thought you were different."

He's looking at her with frustration and disappointment and something close to pity, and it's all too much for her to stand. She shoves him, hard, sending him sprawling into the sand and standing over him with balled fists.

"I _am._ You think those dragons could care for themselves? You think we haven't saved them from being slaves to other masters? They willingly bond with our warriors and fight _alongside_ our people to free their kind from the tyranny they have fought their entire lives!"

"So you eliminate anyone else who so much as rides a dragon, and declare yourself a conquering hero?" He sits up on his elbows, and she worries he'll try to stand again and look down at her with those goddamn pitying eyes, so she drops to the sand and pins him to the ground, looming over him from where she sits on his hips.

"I'm _not_ a hero, Hiccup. No one is. Someone should have told you that a long time ago."

His left leg twitches beneath her, and she can still feel the ghost of cold metal pressed against the inside of her calf last night, shifting back and forth and digging deeper and deeper into the sand.

He stares up at her, and there's a touch of betrayal this time.

"Why?"

She bites her lip and tries to find the words to convince a man who doesn't share her ideals that her actions were for the best.

"You said it yourself. The Alpha controls them all."

"Protects," he spat up at her. "The Alpha _protects_ them all, Astrid. Protects them from people like you, and my father."

"Or lets them be abused by people like you, and your mother."

He has the gall to laugh. She scowls, leaning in to hiss angry words into his mouth, but as soon as she takes her weight off him he's grabbing her hips and flipping them, throwing her beneath him with a spray of sand and pinning her arms by her head. He slides up to hover over her body, using the weight of lean muscle he's built over the past four years to hold down her bucking hips and scrambling legs. She kicks out, hitting the solid metal of his prosthetic and grunting as the pain knifes through her foot, dimly aware that Toothless has snorted and moved away.

His face is inches from hers, his breath hot against her cheek, but he doesn't speak. He doesn't do anything - just lies here, holding her down - until her struggling stops and she actually looks at him. There's regret in his eyes and as a sea breeze shivers by and tosses the flames of his pathetic little fire, the light glints off tears.

"I thought this worked."

There's something so hopelessly honest in his words that she freezes, and confronts her own emotions before speaking. They're a mess - still pumping with adrenaline from the battle and relief at being alive and arousal at the press of his body against her. But above all, there's sadness.

"It still could."

She slides her arms down in the sand, and he cautiously lets her move, until his hands are rested over hers and she tangles her fingers with his. She can feel the quickening of her pulse as he starts, looking down at their interlaced hands in shock, before she leans up to kiss the line of his jaw. Rough stubble scraps against her lips and she traces it with her tongue, remembering how it felt against her neck and the sensitive skin of her breasts, scratching and grating against her like sandpaper rubbing through to her soul.

She moves her lips down to his neck, following the line of his pulse and feeling him shiver above her, pressing himself into her. He drops to the sand, lying flush against her and forcing her lips back to his.

This time, the kiss is savage and rough, not an ounce of innocence to be found as he runs his tongue against hers and she sinks her teeth into his bottom lip. Soon, her whole body is joining her mouth in a wild rush to meet every part of him - back arching, hips rolling, legs spreading to bracket his body between her thighs. He responds, groaning in pain and frustration as the thrusts of his hips meet the sharp spines of her skirt. One of his hands tears away from hers to shove aside the fabric of her skirt and press against her through her leggings, and she hooks a leg around him, feeling the top of his prosthetic digging into the crease of her knee and the rough bandage around his arm rubbing against her sternum.

It isn't sweet, or loving, like it had been the night before. That had started with an idea - two ideas - both woefully misunderstood in the light of day. She had been so happy he was alive and he had been infected by her happiness, too overjoyed that she was hugging him and chattering to remember that she was part of the reason he left in the first place. In the hurried words of reunion, he had mentioned his mother and the Alpha, and she had said she was now Stoick's heir, and for a precious moment, they had each caught an idea and held them with both hands, thinking this could work. She had thought of the Alpha, who controlled all dragons, and a chance to expand their army and bring Hiccup and Valka home with honour. He had thought she could see the error of her ways, and convince Stoick to stop his expansion of Hooligan territory using dragons as weapons. Neither knew who had started it, although it was probably her - her heart had been racing at the idea that he was alive and willing to compromise and her mind had flown to the dozen or so kisses they'd shared as teenagers, and she couldn't resist testing whether his new, adult lips were as uncertain and soft against hers as they had been. One rough, excited kiss had tumbled into tearing off clothing and the frantic search of teasing hands and lips - the flames left smouldering by four years apart stoked and fanned with each gasp and moan. It had seemed right, as she had reached for him and fitted them together in a final, unbreakable bond. He hadn't lasted - she had been amazed he lasted until he was inside her - but he had stroked and searched her flesh until she was writhing beneath him and shouting his name to the gods. As she lay panting in the sand, control slowly pouring back into her body, she had sighed at the feel of his lips against hers and felt the spark of a new beginning. A new hope, for Berk, for the dragons, for Stoick, and for herself.

The words he had whispered against her skin as she reluctantly dressed to return to her camp and change everything had made it abundantly clear that he was as hopelessly, unendingly and indescribably in love with her as he had always had been, and she finally had a name to give to the rush she felt at the sound of his voice and the touch of his lips against hers.

That had been less than twenty four hours ago, and now, it's ending.

There is a finality in the way she throws him onto his back and pulls his damp hand from the front of her leggings, wiping it against her breast and demanding more. She's not letting soft words and tender touches win this time - she will take what she can and let him know exactly what he is forsaking. He groans as she unties the knot of his trousers with her teeth and throws the last of her clothing into the sand to worry about once this is over. His eyes still widen as she sinks onto him, and she almost slaps him for being too sweet, too loving, in what should be a vengeful and furious farewell. She rolls her hips punishingly against his and tugs on the peak of her own breast, watching his eyes darken as he thrusts into her and resumes the angry passion. His teeth nip at her collarbone as his hand flits between them, circling her centre and setting her body alight, the flames building and building—

She slumps down over him, still joined, and vaguely realises he still hasn't finished. She looks up at him, from where her head rests in the crook of his shoulder, and tries to focus on the angry passion that will surely be in his face instead of thinking about how well their bodies fit together, as if they were made to be one and split by the gods in their rage and jealousy.

But instead of anger, she finds regret, and tenderness.

He rolls them over again, softly, her bare back sinking into the sand, and she realises that their hands have been joined the whole time.

He's gentle now, tender, but no less intense, and she finds heat building in her gut again just from the way he's staring at her and refusing to break eye contact. Everything is smoother, slicker, but still tight and full, and she feels as though he knows her body from years of exploration, not a few awkward teenaged kisses and one night of passion on this same sand. He takes his time, savouring each touch and stroke, still holding her gaze with that goddamn regret.

She won't change, and neither will he. And they both know it. They could love each other for all the world to see, could shout their passion from rooftops, could make love on this beach until Ragnarok. But they would never change each other's minds.

She's not sure how much time has passed when her back finally arches and her nails scrape desperately against his back as he groans and they come together - it feels like an eternity, and she wishes it could be. She doesn't know how long they spend wrapped around one another, waiting for the sun to rise and finish this. She doesn't even realise she's crying until he presses his cheek against hers to blot out the tears; he doesn't realise until then that he's crying too.

They finally untangle themselves as a new dawn streaks the east. She brings his clothes to him, knowing already that he hates walking and bending on sand with his prosthetic, and she rewraps the axe wound on his upper arm, pressing a kiss directly to the wound this time instead of its bandages. She's almost dressed when he drops to his knees and rests his head against her bare naval, against the child they will never have and peace they will never know. After long moments, he kisses the sharp line of her hipbone and she pushes him away, turning her back to find her shirt and her axe.

He's buckling the last of the belts that secure his flight suit when she kisses him, hard and brutal, for the last time.

She's climbing onto Stormfly's back before any words are spoken.

"Astrid."

She stops, her name sounding so different in his cracked morning voice to the way he'd moaned it against her shoulder when he spilled within her and it seemed that time stopped.

"Yesterday, when we flew together."

She can still feel the wind pushing back her fringe and stinging her eyes as she squinted into the sun and dared to hope he was real.

"It's like I got back something I didn't know I'd lost."

Awkward kisses in her family barn that had been seared into her mind over the past four years, being throw to insignificance by the feel of his hands on her hips and the stroke of his entire body against hers.

Hoping that this could work.

The fury in her adopted father's eyes when she told him his son and wife still lived, with the king of all dragons at their command. Swinging her axe at him without thinking on a battlefield of melting ice, slicing through his armour like paper and cutting deep into the skin. Trying to stop the cry of his name as she broke around him, and being powerless to do so.

Knowing that this was it.

"That's the part I'll choose to remember."

She can't meet his eyes, so she digs her heels into Stormfly's flank and lets the wind drown out her heart.


	2. Chapter 2

It's ten years before she looks him in the eye again.

He sees her at a distance, more than once - standing on the balcony of a fortress to greet her people, commanding armies from Stormfly's back, standing by his father's side when the ceasefires are called and the bodies are cleared from the battlefields. He sees her image more - as the empire expands, she becomes its figurehead, and her striking appearance inspires the artists of the conquered cities. He never sees her close enough to make out the details of her features, to see if the sculptors and painters have it right when they change the style of her braid and recreate her figure with wider hips and more feminine curves than he remembers. They never have her freckles, and he isn't sure if they've faded with time or the artists have just never been close enough to see them. He starts to wonder if he really can remember her, or is just recalling a mishmash of features from other, closer women and the girl he once loved in the dark.

When he is knocked from Toothless' back in battle, he uses his last thought to wrench the dragon's tail fin open and lock it there, so his battle brother could fly away. He plummets to the ground, prosthetic twisting out of shape on impact, and the soldiers who rush to him can barely believe what they found. There are sharp whispers, as a bag is pulled over his head and his hands are tied behind his back, arguing whether it's even possible that he can be separated from his dragon, and whether they could be the ones to do it. One is convinced he is a body double, part of a clever rouse by the enemy, and he almost laughs at that.

He is tired and cold when they march him from the battlefield, his prosthetic causing him to stumble with every other step. It wasn't even a proper battle - there had been half a dozen dragons chained by the gates of the city, a warning to thieves and marauders that the city was part of the Empire now, and he had attacked with less than ten dragons to free them. Somehow, his mother had gotten wind of the plans and sent a dozen of her people to flank him in some misguided peace offering, and the city had seen it as an attack. It was a stupid misunderstanding at best, but Toothless had managed to blast through the rocks where the chains were anchored, so at least his mission had been achieved - by then though, half of his mother's greener recruits had been knocked to the ground and captured. He had just been freeing the last one and sending her back into the air when the bola struck him.

He's stripped of his armour and shoved into a cell, still sightless, and left to listen to the hissed argument of the soldiers. Two of them want to call their captain. One wants to call the queen. Three are still convinced it isn't really him.

He closes his eyes beneath the bag, wanting nothing more than a few moments sleep after almost a week of wakefulness without food. Maybe being captured isn't such a bad thing. The whispered debate becomes soft and soothing, like a lullaby, and the clammy stones of the cell almost feel like Toothless' hide in winter.

He is just drifting off when the clattering of feet on stairs echoed through the prison, and the soldiers are silenced once and for all when the feet stopped at their level. There's another sound, more hollow, as something is dropped to the ground.

"Your Majesty!"

There's an organised clink and jingle of armour as the soldiers stand to attention, then silence. He can imagine whichever captain it is peering at him through the bars, trying to decide if the skinny, bleeding man in a thin shirt and breeches is the enemy they so fear.

"Why didn't you report this?"

His heart drops at the sound of her voice.

"We weren't sure if it was really him, ma'am - we were just trying to work out—"

"Show me his left arm."

After all these years, she snaps orders with the same curt tone she'd used when she was fifteen, demanding that he kiss her for once instead of her always doing all the work.

He hears the scrape of a steel key and the whine of badly rusted metal hinges before he's hauled to his knees and the left sleeve of his shirt is torn away at the the shoulder. He isn't sure if he can feel the cold air more or less, and worries that he's finally going in to shock.

There's a rustle of clothing and he feels someone leaning in close, and when he smells ash and iron he dares to hope it's her.

The bag comes off slowly, and even in the dim prison it takes a moment for him to adjust to the light and realise the bag is being pulled away with the point of an axe.

The artists across the empire have been wrong. She looks older, worn, her face still marred with ash from the battle and her lips painted with red - but her freckles are still there, and she's more beautiful than ever.

She squints at him for a moment, eyes roaming his face, and he realises she's never seen his beard - he wears a helmet into battle, and it's probably still lying somewhere on the city walls where he was knocked down. He's aged too, and he fears she won't recognise him at all, when her eyes finally snap to his.

He can't remember if the last time she made eye contact with him was when she kissed him, for the last time, or when she came undone beneath him, shouting his name into the night.

"It's him."

She straightens and dusts off the front of her skirts, looking down at him. Then she glances at the soldiers and her eyes harden.

"Leave him here to rot."

They hesitate, one reaching a hand out to her shoulder in an almost too familiar way. "Your majesty—"

"Leave!"

She turns on her heel and marches away up the stairs, and they follow her in silence.

He sleeps, somehow, on the cold, damp floor, and when she returns - hours later, with bread and bandages - he tells himself he's still dreaming.

She doesn't move, standing over him with the peace offering in her hands, and he realises she's still holding her axe - or at least, _an_ axe. Whoever forged the weapon was more focused on beauty than function, laying gold into the handle without balancing the weight of the head.

She's still standing stock still when he finally decides to break the silence.

"Your majesty?"

She looks down at him again, and he's struck by how so little could change so much. Her hair is still braided, but the braid catches in a circle around her head, not trailing over her shoulder like it used to. She's gained weight, around her hips and thighs, although it looks healthy, womanly, like a completion of the change she'd already undergone at twenty. Her cheeks are still high and scattered with freckles, and he knows that if he could pull away her shirt he would find the same freckles dusting her now-larger breasts. She's decked out in fine armour and touches of jewellery, but none of the gaudy gold and precious stones shine as bright as her clear blue eyes.

"Hiccup."

She bites down on her bottom lip, her voice strangled, and suddenly the cold commanding officer is gone and she's fifteen, asking him to make sure nothing goes wrong in the Kill Ring.

He doesn't buy it.

"Since when were you royalty?"

She pauses, taken aback by his questioning and the lack of welcome in his words.

"Since I married their king."

He already knew - he's known for almost ten years. He'd been in the crowd, watching as she swore to love and obey a man three times her age, sickly and pale, less than three months after she had cut him open on a battlefield and torn him apart on a deserted beach. She had looked fake, the picture of a perfect bride in white and blue, but his father had stood close behind her and the message of the marriage was clear. This was not love. This was an alliance, and she was a part of the bargain.

He had drunk himself into a stupor that night, knowing what would be happening to her, what had probably already happened in the negotiations. That had been the first time he woke in a tavern bed with a nameless blonde woman, and he almost convinced himself it was her.

It wasn't. It never was.

He wonders if she can see the other women in his eyes - Camicazi, Ruffnut, every nameless blonde he's sought out to soothe his need and paid to tie her hair in a braid. Never the same woman twice - they learn their mistake well enough the first time he groans her name.

"I'm still just the chief to most people."

She sits down without invitation, holding out the bread and a waterskin.

"I heard about Valka."

He scowls, and as much as he wants to throw the food and her false sympathy back in her face, he takes it. It has been so long since he last ate, he can't count the days.

"She found out."

Her brow furrows, so he bites down on the bread and pointed between the two of them. Her eyes widen, in something between understanding and fear, and he swallows before she can speak.

"It wasn't just that. We'd been fighting for months. Years really. I'm not sure she realises she's become what she thinks she's fighting."

He thinks of the growing army, the dragon riders who come from all corners of the world to fight under the command of Valka the Brave, the battle strategies and fortified ice caves. The Bewilderbeast was weakened in the Empire's attacks, but it inflicted enough damage in return to place a red mark on the Empire's map, a territory they couldn't afford to conquer.

Astrid surveys him, then carefully reaches forward to wipe a damp cloth against the blood on his brow. He lets her, remembering the last time she cared for him, always fixing the wounds she inflicted.

"I still don't know how she found out though."

"I told her."

He freezes beneath her touch as she pats at the wound, staring at him almost clinically.

"What?"

"During the last ceasefire."

He drops the bread to grab her wrist in a bruising grip, but she doesn't falter.

"She was getting too strong. You and Toothless have always been half her army - it's always your strategy, your inventions, your head behind her fist. So to destroy my enemy, I cut off its head."

She moves her arm to rinse out the cloth, but he tightens his grip until he sees a grimace of pain. She scowls, and fights back with words.

"She didn't want to believe me, but apparently you've spent the last ten years fucking every blonde within fifty miles of your camp, so it wasn't hard to convince her."

She takes advantage of his shocked silence to bite the back of his hand - he lets her wrist go with a yelp of pain, cradling his bitten hand close and searching her eyes for some sort of remorse. There is none.

"You're a cruel woman."

"Maybe. But I'm a good chief."

He scoff. "And a good wife?"

She shrugs and scoops up the dropped bread, holding it out as an offering. "I don't know about that."

She's too at ease with the whole situation, and he wishes she was anything else. He wants her to be bitter. He wants her to be sour and sharp and to hate him, to spit on his memory and dance on his grave. Then it would be so much easier not to love her.

It is with bitterness that he speaks the next words. "Queen Astrid. A pretty wife to a powerful man. You must be so proud."

She freezes as if he struck her. Then he feels the cold steel of the axe blade against his neck, and doesn't know when she had dropped to all fours and took on the stance of a wild beast.

"Fuck you."

She leans in to spit the words at him, and he realises she was close enough to kiss. _What the Hel_, he figures. _I'm already a dead man._

Her lips feel different - less chapped, slippery with the dark red paint, and when she shoves him away he can see the dark colour has spread, although it is nothing compared to the deep blush in her cheeks.

Astrid Hofferson, blushing. There's a sight he never expected to see.

Or Astrid Haddock, or Astrid the Conquerer, or Astrid Wife-of-a-King, or whatever name she goes by now.

She scowls and punches him in the shoulder, and it all feels too familiar.

When she shoves him against the back of the cell and kisses him herself, rough and forceful, he realises how familiar it is.

They'd been sixteen, and he'd just had yet another row with his father. She had watched, silently, one hand on Stormfly's flank, as he railed against Stoick's suggestion to use dragons in the spring raids, but she had left her dragon to grab his arm and drag him through the village to her family's barn. The argument hadn't been finished, and he had fought against her grip only to remember that she had always been much stronger than him.

Once the door was shut and she'd shoved him against a pillar and started kissing his neck, he wondered why he ever tried to fight her.

Their teeth had clashed when he tried to initiate a kiss, and she had laughed and kissed him again anyway. He had almost forgotten the fight with his father when she slid her tongue past his lips to gently brush against his, and all thoughts completely disappeared when she took one of his hands and slid it up to the side of her breast.

It had all come crashing down when she had panted against his ear that using the dragons in the raids would save the village weeks of preparation and expand their territory ten-fold.

It had been a case of give and take. She had offered him her ideals and her body, and he had left less than a week later, swearing never to return. Four years later, they'd had too little time for such exchanges, and they had parted with an understanding that neither of them could change, and they would never be together again.

The way she kisses him now though, fisting her hands in his shirt and biting savagely down on his bottom lip, feels both punishing and pleading. She pulls her mouth from his and they separate with a lewd smack before she moves to his chin, kissing it once before pulling back with a scrunched face.

"Beard."

He shrugs and can't resist moving a hand to her wider hip. "Ten years," he reminds her, digging his fingers into her skin and finding it softer, more yielding than it had been.

She nods, and the light catches on the wetness in the corner of her eye.

He wants to resist her. He knows what she wants, how she feels, and he wants that to be her downfall. She leads the army he's spent nearly half his life fighting, and it's her empire that's slowly strangling this land into submission.

But he loves her, so he leans up to kiss away the tear.

She shudders at the feel of his beard on her cheek, unfamiliar yet instantly right, and her grip tightens on his shirt.

"Stay."

She freezes as soon as the word passes through her lip, spoken without her brain's permission. He pauses, draws back - her eyes are screwed shut and there's a kind of embarrassment and shame to the twist of her brow.

"How?"

Her face relaxes slightly, and it's with something close to hope that she opens her eyes.

"I'm their leader - you can be pardoned. Then you could join us, you and Toothless, and you could finally—"

It's a fight he feels they've had a thousand times before, will have a thousand times again, but this time he changes the topic.

"And what would your husband do?"

She stiffens, and her face cracks - he doesn't know why. It almost seems like loyalty, yet here she is kissing an enemy of the Empire in a prison while her husband sleeps peacefully above them in the fortress. He leans in, but she twists away and he's left to kiss her cheek and chin. He does so, and her tense muscles slowly relax until she moans when his lips move to the shell of her ear.

"Let me go."

He whispers the words, cheek rested against hers, trying to ignore the way they still fit together, the way they've grown and changed in tandem. The edge of her fringe tickles his nose and he can't believe that of all the blonde hair he's seen and felt, he's finally back with hers.

She shakes her head but he holds firm, blocking her movements and gently kissing his way across her face and back to her lips. She's still shaking, still trying to deny him this one request, but when he finally kisses her, she melts into him and her hands flatten against his chest. It's sweet and innocent, a harsh reminder of what they can't have, and she holds it far longer than she should.

"Can you walk?"

He looks down at his leg, remembering the sharp pain and screeching twist of metal when he fell, and shakes his head. She laughs bitterly and kisses him again.

"Do I have to do everything myself?"

She stands, offering him a hand and slinging his arm over her shoulder, steadying his weight. He stumbles slightly and she catches him, before carefully opening the cell door again and checking both ways. She pauses at the foot of the stairs and leans down, taking him with her, to pick up what she had dropped when she arrived.

It was his helmet.

She must have found it on the battlefield, seen him fall and go after him - probably planning to kill him herself - and followed the soldiers back to the prison.

She presses it into his free hand, and finds his armour in a chest by the door. He tells himself she'd just trying to speed his escape, to remove the traitor who could reveal their secret, but that doesn't explain the way her hands linger as she fits the leather pieces back together over his body.

"Where's Toothless?"

"He'll be nearby. He'll know."

She tries not to scoff, and fails, and it only drives the point home that for all his wishes, she will never know Stormfly in the way he and Toothless were bonded. She commands her dragon, with words and signals, and considers the Nadder a friend and comrade. But she wouldn't call her a sister, or a best friend.

She doesn't take a torch from the wall, preferring to slide through the corridors in darkness and silence, keeping him from stepping on his prosthetic to reduce noise. She winds through stone corridors and staircases with a practised ease, as if she were more at home sneaking around in the darkness. Dully, he realises this is could be her home, but she seems more comfortable hiding like a thief than striding like a queen. He wonders if her husband is sleeping behind one of the closed doors they pass, then tries not to think about it, and thinks of nothing else.

She finally stops, after climbing endless stairs, and pushes him into a doorway, concealed from sight.

"Wait here," she instructs, before disappearing up another, final set of curving stairs that he knows will lead to the battlements. Silently, he wills Toothless to come, and not to try to gut Astrid on sight. He's never sure if Toothless truly understands how he feels about her - they face one another in battle every year or so, yet still he disappears into a village every now and then to seek out the woman who looks most like her.

He leans against the door and tries not to think about the way she smells of ash and steel and something alluring that he's still drawn to, and not the heavy perfume he imagined she stunk of the day and night of her wedding. He's still trying to drive thoughts of which room is her husband's when the door he's rested against opens inwards.

He stumbles and falls to the floor, reaching for the knife in his wristguard as he turns to see the attacker, and freezes.

The boy is hardly awake, still rubbing one eye as he looks down in alarm. He's small, and skinny, barely as high as Hiccup's elbow, with a head that seems too big for his slender neck. His light brown hair is messy and in the light leaking from the fireplace in his room it glints a ruddy red. He couldn't be older than nine.

The boy's sleepy eyes are green.

The boy jumps at the sight of the savage man on his doorstep, and steps back in shock, mouth falling open. He looks around in confusion and fear, and in profile his nose is small and upturned and dusted with freckles.

He finally catches sight of something over Hiccup's shoulder, and his face melts into a look of trust.

"Mama."

Hiccup turns, already knowing what he's looking at.

"Astrid."

Her eyes are almost as wide and fearful as the boy's, but for completely different reasons.

The boy takes a step forward, to go to her, but is blocked by the man sprawled across the threshold, staring at the chief and refusing to move. They stay there, frozen, until Astrid shakes her head and blinks, cracking the silence.

"Toothless is on the roof. He must have known."

"Astrid."

She takes a few steps down and slides under his arm, hoisting him to his feet. He goes to fight her, then remembers how much stronger she is - how much stronger she's always been.

"Whose child is that?"

She purses her lips and pulls him up the first few steps.

"Astrid, answer me."

He refuses to move and she drags him, not caring for the noise she makes.

"Mama?"

"Go back to bed Stoick. This is a bad dream."

The words are forced and thin, but the child - Stoick - obeys, shutting his door and leaving his mother to drag the stranger, a man who will always be a stranger, up to the top of the turret.

He finally stops resisting and goes with her when he realises she's crying silent tears.

Toothless is perches on one of the reinforced battlements, his teeth out and claws strong, snarling at Astrid as she appears with Hiccup slung over her arm. She drops him and falls to the ground herself, her last strength sapped and the truth finally out in the open.

Toothless snaps at his rider when he doesn't immediately rise and swing into the saddle to escape, to get away from this place that smells of servitude. Instead, Hiccup glares at the woman - the queen, the chief, the conquerer - and waits for her to speak.

"Everyone thought it was a miracle."

She looks up at him, her eyes glinting blue in the moonlight.

"To be born so early, but so healthy. And to look so much like his _adopted_ grandfather."

She blinks and a heavy tear leaks down her cheek - she does nothing to stop it, and instead grabs his shoulders and pleads with him.

"No one knows. Not your father, not the boy. Not Valka. Not the king."

"Your husband," he spits bitterly, and she scowls.

"He'll inherit a kingdom. And when I die, he'll have an empire. What could you give him?"

He goes to speak, and realises he has no answer.

"Why did you hide him from me?"

She sighs and shakes her head, tears leaking down her cheeks. "I would have told you the second you came to me to ask. Ten years, Hiccup. You had ten years to come back to me."

Toothless warbles again, worried rather than angry, and unfurls his wings impatiently. She looks at the dragon, and nods, her mouth set in a hard line.

"You need to leave."

He wants to demand she take him back downstairs, wants her to let him at least meet her son, wants her to let both the child and the father know the truth finally, wants her to come with him, wants her to come with him and bring their son.

But instead, he hugs her close and know he can't change her mind.

She buries her face in the crook of his neck, just like she used to, and he realises she's carried this secret for ten years - carried his child, nursed and raised it, slept in another man's bed to keep the boy safe. He thinks of his ten years of nursing only bitterness and seeking out every whore with blonde hair to pretend he had her back, ten years of hating her empire's expansions and her marriage and everything about her that wasn't his.

And seeing her now, falling apart with duty and resignation, he feels nothing but guilt.

"You need to leave." He echoes her words, but she shakes her head against his shoulder, grinding her tears into his armour and letting out a single sob.

"I can't. We can't."

He knows _we_ is the family she's risked her life and her happiness to protect, but he doesn't know if he's a part of it.

She pulls away, but she doesn't kiss him this time - just helps him to his feet and over to Toothless, who looks at her with guarded thanks. She pats a hand just below the dragon's ear, and he lets her, not understanding what has happened, but knowing what it means.

He winds his fingers through hers, and she leans into him, but when he tries to kiss her, knowing this could well be the last chance, she turns away. He hides the hurt and climbs into Toothless' saddle, to run away from responsibility while it weights her down and ties her to the earth.

"Hiccup."

Her voice is weak, and there's still a trace of her tears in the way it cracks. He can imagine her singing lullabies and telling stories, somehow finding time between being a conquerer and a commander to be a mother.

"I've had him ten years."

Realising what she was carrying, what her body had stored and tended without her knowledge or permission. Finding a husband to shirk the blame, and finding a king at that, in the little time she had. Bearing the pain of childbirth and parenthood alone, knowing that the boy's true father was a thousand miles away on the other side of a war without any idea what she was facing.

He bites his lip and nods, finally understanding.

"I had you two nights."

Toothless leaps off the battlement, taking his rider with him, knowing that if he doesn't leave now, he won't ever be able to.


	3. Chapter 3

It's late spring when the Empire finally moves its forces to the Dragon Allies' ice fortress.

He's spent the past three nights on watch duty, circling the air on Toothless' back and trying to gain some intel on the enemy's plan, but it's all in vain. She knows too well by now how to avoid his surveillance, and sometimes it's more than cruel - he'll follow a sentry on a Gronkle's back and be lead around in circles while she uses her own man's movements to track his.

It had taken two years to heal the rift between him and Valka, but he hadn't expected the time to take such a toll on his mother too. She had barely been fifty-two - ten years younger than his father, who could still be seen on battlefields even as his new daughter took control of the Empire and declare herself its chief - but her hair was streaking grey and her face had turned sallow. Their reunion had been tense at best, bitter at worst, but after almost a month of staying out of obligation and avoiding her out of shame, his life had changed irreparably when an angry girl with dark skin and darker hair had insisted she be taken directly to the Alliance's commander.

He searches for her as soon as he lands, knowing she won't be far behind. Where Astrid uses her men as a distraction, he never thought he'd be the one proving a distraction in kind.

She lands soon enough, pulling off her helmet and instantly placing a hand to her dragon's flank.

"Anything?"

She nods, pursing her lips before starting forwards. "Come on. Grandma need to hear this too."

She had been barely twelve years old when she tore a place in his life for her, swearing and hoisting a finely crafted foreign sword, cradling a dragon's egg the colour of the night. Now, five years later, she's still small and wiry, and just as untrusting towards anyone but himself, Valka and the dragon that finally hatched from her egg like a miracle.

At first, his interest in the girl had been met with suspicion. It was well enough known that part of the row that had sent him off in the first place had involved the women of the camp, and a woman elsewhere. But it was blondes he was known to favour, and this child - because she really was a child - was dark and could defend herself from any unwanted advances. They slowly came to accept that the girl was only civil in either his presence or his mother's, and when the egg hatched and her dragon was barely big enough to fly, he had begun training her.

It was slowly accepted that Hiccup saw himself in the girl, and before long it wasn't uncommon to call her his daughter.

She winds through the maze of caverns and tunnels, brushing ice from her short cropped hair and keeping quiet. He doesn't try to start a conversation - she doesn't offer one. They've trained enough in silence not to waste words. The dragons trail behind them, Toothless taking longer steps than her smaller, younger companion. Hiccup had been mortified when she's named him Gummy upon his hatching, but the name had stuck - as did the dragon, it turned out, in all sorts of small spaces that he shouldn't have found in the first place. Gummy in more ways than one.

"Mairead!"

Valka's face lights up at the sight of the girl, and his heart drops at how tired she looks. She's been relegated to rest, fighting off a fever, but worry takes more of a toll on her than physical danger, and she spends sleepless nights running over plans of defence with him.

Mairead's face splits into a gentle smile, and she sits on the edge of her grandmother's bed.

"They're rallying to attack tomorrow."

Valka seizes with fear, before Mairead brushes a hand against her brow to calm her.

"Shh, Grandmama, it's alright. We're going to be fine." Her face splits into a sly, victorious grin. "They've given command to the prince."

His heart stops.

"I saw him. Standing in front of his men like a little lost lamb. They haven't a hope."

Valka pauses, takes the information in, then looks meaningfully to Hiccup. He looks away. He's never confirmed or denied her insinuating glances, ever since the boy's existence was officially acknowledge when he came of age, and Valka had a spare moment to count backwards.

"His father's been dead two years," Valka finally says, "and all he's done is hide behind his mother's skirts. He might be a king in his own land, but she must want him to have this 'final victory' so one day he can be chief."

Mairead nods, and puts a hand to Gummy's head.

"The Chief was still there. Or empress or queen or whatever she calls herself now. And her father."

Valka stiffens, and they all know the love she once felt for the man who now sits on councils to decide how the world will be run.

"You should have seen it - the little prince is all knees and elbows, just hit a growth spurt, and he looks like a shocked rabbit in spring. No wonder they kept him all hidden until he was of age."

"What does he ride?"

If she's confused by his quick change of topic, she doesn't let it show. "A Nightmare."

He nods, relieved. When Mairead had appeared, insisting that the Empire had put a bounty on her orphaned head for the little egg she carried, he hadn't believed her. When Gummy had hatched, he suddenly changed his tune, knowing that Astrid would have torn down the world to give her son that dragon.

Valka struggles to sit up in bed, and both Mairead and Hiccup, along with Toothless and Gummy, help her. When she's upright, she reaches forward for Mairead's hands - the girl takes them, small and smooth and dark against thin and aged and pale.

"If they're letting new blood lead the attack, it might be time for us to do the same."

Mairead's face cracks into a vicious smile, teeth brutally white.

"I won't disappoint like he will. And I wouldn't have you miss it for the world," she replies, straightening and looking out to the sanctuary. "I'll find Cloudjumper - he must have one flight left in him."

She leaves mother and son alone, knowing that there are always words she isn't meant to hear.

When Valka reaches for her son's hand, he doesn't take it so readily.

"I'm proud of you, you know that? For all your mistakes, I'm still proud."

He bites back bitter words, knowing that every time he sees her could be the last. All his mistakes includes leading the Empire to their door the very first time eighteen years ago, and leaving Berk in the first place to let the Empire develop. All his mistakes includes the boy who will attack tomorrow, and his mother knows it even if he never says a word about him.

Eight years later, he can still see the confusion in the boy's face, and the naked fear in his mother's eyes.

"She wouldn't step back unless she was certain they would win, with or without her."

Valka nods, her eyelids heavy. Hiccup can't tell if she's sleepy or just tired.

"It won't be the same," she whispers, as he helps her to lie back again. "This time, there'll be a victor."

He agrees, but doesn't say that he's not sure it will be them.

Mairead finds him on a high ice spire, tracking the sky for an early attack. Toothless is with him, as Gummy is with her, trailing behind like a shadow. She holds her helmet in one hand, wearing the same armour he first crafted for himself at sixteen.

"Cloudjumper will wake her once the attack is launched. He'll carry her to a safe distance to watch. And if, gods forbid, something goes wrong…"

She leaves the sentence hanging, and strokes her dragon's side instead. They stand in silence for almost an hour before she speaks again.

"I'll kill him myself if I have to."

His blood runs cold when he realises that she's exactly what he never wanted her to be.

He grabs her by the arm - she's so much shorter that he assumes it will be easy, but she snaps out of his grip like a wild cat, hissing.

"You are not to kill that boy, Mairead. You are not to kill any of them."

Her face twists in shock and disgust. "They would kill every one of us, Hiccup. They would —"

He's wondering what her next words will be when she swings onto Gummy's back and they take to the sky. At first, he thinks it's teenaged rebellion - and the gods know, she's had her fair share of that - but when they wheel into the air and head east, his stomach drops.

"Mairead!"

He and Toothless are faster, and have five more years practise flying than she's had breathing - but age has finally caught up with Toothless, and he has neither the speed nor agility he once possessed. Desperately, he looses a blast at an ice spear above her, hoping to caution her back to him, but instead Gummy goes into a barrel roll, shooting out from the ice mountain and banking toward the cliffs in the distance, where the Empire's army waits.

In the open air, agility counts for nothing and within minutes, he's by her side in the early dawn light.

"Mairead, no!"

She turns to him, eyes narrowed through the slits of her helmet, and even though he can't see it, he knows her face is fixed in a determined scowl. There's a crashing sound from far behind - he turns to see a dozen dragons shooting out from the fortress, and realises dimly that Toothless' blast must have been seen as an attack. The Alliance dragons have woken and are launching to fight.

"Mairead, I need to explain this to you!"

"What's to explain?"

Her voice is thinned by the rushing air, and sounds whispered even though he knows she's shouting.

And really, she's right. What must be explained is so messy and confused and started so long before she was born that it can't be said in simple words.

Her hand brushes Gummy's neck, and they slow slightly in the air - and for a moment, he hopes she'll listen to him. But when she pulls her knife from her wristguard and leans out of her saddle, his heart drops.

"Sorry, Dad."

She slashes through the cables of Toothless' tail rig and the prosthetic falls slack at the lack of tension; she leaves him flailing in the air and shoots off towards the camp.

* * *

><p>Astrid is still awake when the horn is sounded and the cry of attack ripples across the camp.<p>

She's just finished her war paint for the battle the next day - she started wearing it after her first battle barely ten miles from the camp, painting and disguising her face and taking the opportunity to be someone else - and she hurriedly smears on the last few strokes, not caring how they look. She's holding her axe - her old axe, her true battle weapon - and swinging onto Stormfly's back before most of the troops are even out of their tents, a frightening vision with an orange and blue face. With a sharp cry Stormfly takes to the air, shooting up to survey the coming attack. There's a swirling cloud of dragons, drawing close, but at their head, far closer—

"Night Fury!"

She plummets back down to hover close to land, knowing the one place he can't use every one of Toothless' advantages is close to the ground. Stormfly may not have the speed or grace or firepower of Toothless, but she has the tactical advantage. She's defending, and they have no idea what they're about to face.

The Night Fury shoots over the camp, releasing two blasts and turning their catapults to splinters, before whirling in the air, back towards her son's tent.

Astrid frowns, just as a Nightmare flies over the camp and knocks down a dozen tents with one powerful beat of its wings and everything turns to chaos.

Stoick.

She has to find him, protect him - because whatever has happened to Hiccup, he isn't in his right mind. He hasn't launched a single attack in eight years, ever since his botched raid on the fortress, ever since he learned of his son. He's defended - he's defended constantly, and occasionally run reconnaissance, but there has been so little aggression in his work for Valka that she has dared to hope that he's called a ceasefire within himself, that he can't attack knowing that it's not just her he's fighting, but his own flesh and blood.

Then again, this is the first time Stoick has travelled with the army - the first time he's led an attack. Maybe she's cursed them all, finally proving that her son is just as vicious and militaristic as her, melting away any last hopes of reunion in Hiccup's mind.

He can't know that Stoick is so much his son that it hurts. He hasn't seen the way the boy clutches at weapons with his too-skinny arms, the way he talks with umms and ahhs and snarky, sarcastic comments. She didn't know him well enough as a child to realise sooner that he was entirely his father's son.

When Stoick came home at eight years old with an injured Nightmare trailing behind him, she had dared to hope he was better than her.

But better than her wouldn't keep him alive.

She urges Stormfly on, closer, as the Night Fury blasts away the two tents closest - hers, and Stoick's. She wonders vaguely whether Stoick the Vast, her adopted father and her son's namesake, is awake and in battle, since he usually sleeps close to the healers these days - her question is answered with a roar as Skullcrusher appears beside her, his rider weakened but refusing to back down.

"The boy!"

She isn't sure if he's referring to her son or his.

"I'm on it - go stop the others!"

He doesn't question her ability to stop Hiccup, but it was her strength as a warrior that he believed in, not the child he must know they shared. He grunts and Skullcrusher pivots in the air and starts towards the cloud of approaching dragons.

The sky lights up in front of her and she realises Stoick is finally up.

The Nightmare and Night Fury hover like polar opposites, each waiting to make the first move, then diving together in tandem, lighting up the sky with purple and orange fire. It frightens her how close their battle strategy is - where one feigns left, the other catches on the right, and neither can land a blow before the other is twisting away and striking. It seems more a dance than a fight, the pitch black dragon against its flaming opponent, their riders both half standing in their saddles with bared teeth.

She grits her teeth, trying to lay aside the tightening in her chest just as she had when she first approached Valka during the ceasefire, when she was whisked away to the bedchamber on her wedding night, when she sliced through Hiccup's armour and flesh on that first battlefield.

She's spent eighteen years protecting this secret, and she won't let his own father destroy him.

Stormfly loops in the air and shoots a spray of sparks at the battling dragons, and it's distraction enough that both manage to land their first blow. The dragons both drop a few feet in pain, with matching scores on their flanks.

"Hiccup!"

Her voice is desperate, pleading, and the Night Fury's rider turns sharply to her, still in full armour and a helmet. Her heart stops dead as the head tilts, analytical and animalistic.

Then she catches sight of the Night Fury's tail - smooth, unmarred by injury or prosthetic, and by the time she realises it isn't him, the rider had leapt from their saddle and tackled her son to the ground.

The fall is short, thankfully, but she sees the sharp pain on her son's face and feels it in her own breast. She doesn't need to direct Stormfly to drop to the ground, falling with the other dragons and landing in a heap of flames and scales.

Out of the sky, the fight is far more one sided.

Stoick struggles beneath the rider, pinned down as blow after blow hits his brow. Astrid goes to run to him, axe in hand, but the Night Fury leaps into her path and snarls, a hint of purple building at the back of its throat to let her know in no uncertain terms that it will kill her.

The rider draws a knife from a wristguard - and she knows that armour, even if she hasn't seen it for nearly twenty years - and pulls off the helmet. Beneath is a woman - a girl really - with obsidian skin and sharp white teeth.

Stoick stops struggling once the knife rests on his throat.

"You will leave this land."

Her voice is firm and darkly accented, and her steel glints in the last of the moonlight. Astrid can hear soldiers approaching, running with their swords first but stopping dead at the sight of the Night Fury - another Night Fury, after all these years - and the empire's prince pinned down.

Stoick glares up at the rider, even at the point of her knife, and scowls.

"Not while you keep one dragon under your Alpha's command."

The rider laughs - actually laughs - and presses the point into his throat, nicking the flesh and watching as a rivulet of blood leaks down his throat.

"So they can live under yours?"

He strikes while she's off guard, still laughing, bringing his fist up to her shoulder, only to be parried instantly and knocked back down. She has to drop the knife to block him though, and his fingers dig into her arm, dragging her down with him, grappling in the dirt.

Astrid grips the handle of her axe and drops into a fighting stance, ready to pick her moment, and the Night Fury snarls again, reminding the gathering crowd who this fight is truly between.

The rider swings another blow at Stoick, this time aims at his armour-less stomach, and he barely has time to jerk back and try to aim a glancing blow before she's swinging again, relentless in her attacks and agile in her parries. They've stumbled to their feet and she kicks at his knees, aiming at pressure points, using her speed to make up for inferior strength. Astrid almost admires the skill and grace in her motions, then remembers that this girl is trying to kill her son.

She grips her axe even tighter and waits for a moment of distraction.

It comes in a yell from the cliff edge and a clattering a claws and scales.

"STOP!"

Both the rider and Stoick falter, but it's exactly what she's been waiting for. She charges forward raising her axe, ready to strike at the neck of the distracted dragon, when she's knocked down by another dragon, more familiar and tied to the ground, rushing into her and the smaller Night Fury and commanding the entire scene.

Hiccup sits proudly on the dragon's back and draws a sword which burns with white hot flame, as he stares down at the scene like a god.

All her life, she's known what he was capable of. But for the first time ever, she fears him.

But she's fought him long enough and she isn't letting him win again.

He dismounts smoothly, unlatching his prosthetic and leaving Toothless to hold the soldiers and the other Night Fury at bay, just as she drags herself to her feet, panting, and hefts her axe.

"Don't you dare."

Her voice is steady, somehow, and her firm hold on her axe keeps her hands from shaking. His eyes narrow, just as the rider takes advantage of Stoick's confusion and throws him to the ground, pressing a foot against his throat and looking to Hiccup for approval.

He takes a step forward, but his eyes flicker from her to the girl. "No."

She swings her axe at him, just like she had a lifetime ago, but this time he parries with a burning sword and a shower of sparks. She pulls her axe away and aims a kick at him, but he's too fast, too defensive, always shifting away as soon as she's willing to meet him. She has the strength and he has speed and neither has any idea who truly has the advantage. He doesn't know if she's willing to kill him, and she doesn't know if he's willing to watch their son killed, and it hits them both at the same time, just as their weapons clash in midair, that they've completely forgotten the people they're fighting for.

They wrench their weapons apart in tandem and step back, turning to where the rider still has her foot pressed to Stoick's neck, only to watch as his hands close around her ankle and pull to one side, heaving her off balance and sending her into the dirt again. They scramble to their feet together, both with a dragon-like gait, and for all their brave words, both turn to where Hiccup and Astrid stand in horror.

"Mairead."

The girl stiffens, but there's something between her and Hiccup that seems resentful and respecting, and as Astrid slowly lowers her axe, she recognises the same look in Stoick's eyes, and everything falls into place. This girl is his daughter, if not by blood then by bond. And knowingly or not, she is here to kill their son.

It hits them both at the same time, punctuated by the landing of a Stormcutter on the edge of the cliff with its sickly rider, drawing a strangled cry from the man who is a father to both of them.

It's a circle.

Brother and sister, husband and wife, mother and father, brother and sister, over and over again. Mother and son fighting father and daughter, finding new families to drag into their endless battles. Spilling the same blood, fighting the same fights, always refusing to change, being shaped into the same thing by the world around them, into what they always swore they wouldn't be.

He turns to her as he realises and she knows he's had the same revelation.

An endless cycle, splitting families and lovers apart over more than fifty years, starting and cycling again with each new generation.

He pulls off his helmet, and she drops her axe, and there's resignation in both their faces.

A refusal to change, becoming refusal to listen, becoming decades of heartache and hurt.

She takes the first step forward, and he matches her, eyes boring into each other in one of those precious, once in a decade moments. The battle around them has frozen, confused by their actions, but neither of them notices. Neither of them cares.

He drops his flaming sword three paces from her, and she throws her arms around his neck and they meet in a tangle limbs and a deep, desperate kiss.

He feels different - rougher, older - and she curses herself for waiting so long that she has to feel these changes as jarring instead of them going unnoticed as she starts every day waking beside him and ends each one in his arms. He crushes her to him, trying to fuse their bodies into one, and wishes they were alone, wishes they were together, wishes they had done this eighteen years ago when she swung an axe at him in the Bewilderbeast's nest with the sand of their beach still clinging to her skin. His hand cups her cheek, smudging her war-paint as she tightens her hold around him, determined that this time, she won't let him go.

He goes to pull away, remembering their children and the blades they hold at one another's throats, but her hands fist in his hair and hold him to her, deepening to kiss. She's aware of little beyond his lips on hers, is only vaguely aware of his fingers digging into her scalp and pulling her knotted hair apart, leaving a single braid to hang down her back. She doesn't know how much time has passed - only that it's less than the eighteen, no, the _twenty two_ years she has to make up for.

They only break apart when they're wrenched away from each other - Astrid by his daughter, Hiccup by their son. Each holds steel to the parent's throat - Stoick with her own axe in his hands - although she has far more faith in the girl's ability to hold a weapon and use it. She knows their son too well. She grabs at Hiccup as she's yanked away, and he does the same, their fingers knotting together.

Only this time, they won't let go.

"What the Hel do you think you're doing with my mother?"

Stoick's voice is squeaky and uncertain - she's trained him for every possibility in combat, except this.

Hiccup shoots her a glance, and there's a hint of a smile on his face. She can hardly believe it when she grins fully in return, kiss swollen lips glinting in the new dawn, and his own smile widens at the sight of hers. She feels fifteen again, grabbing his shirt front and staking a claim for the whole world to see.

The girl presses her blade a little closer, and Astrid can smell the same ash and leather and Night Fury fire on her, and sends a silent prayer that the girl is a better woman than she has ever been.

She can hear Valka carefully dismounting her dragon, and the elder Stoick dropping his hammer.

She looks back to Hiccup, to more than half a lifetime's love, and her face melts with love and confusion.

"What the Hel _are_ we doing?"

He squeezes the hand that's still caught in his, and her heart surges. It's small, and it might mean nothing - it might get them both killed - but she's sick of running and denying and only ever meeting with blood or tears. Each lying to themselves, pretending it isn't harder to keep fighting than it is to change.

This time, though, they've met in the middle, and made their choice.

"Ending this."


End file.
